DeepSeek prodigy Luo Fuli propels to stardom as China’s modest attempt surpasses US
Chinese AI startup DeepSeek has disrupted the global artificial intelligence landscape, overtaking OpenAI’s ChatGPT as the most downloaded free app on Apple’s U.S. App Store. The company’s rapid rise has been fueled by cutting-edge large language models (LLMs developed at a fraction of the cost of competitors.
At the heart of DeepSeek’s success is Luo Fuli, a 29-year-old AI researcher widely regarded as a key figure in the company’s breakthroughs. Often dubbed the “AI Prodigy”, Luo recently joined Xiaomi under a lucrative contract, reportedly worth 10 million yuan annually.
DeepSeek’s meteoric rise
Founded in 2023 by Liang Wenfeng in Hangzhou, China, DeepSeek has gained global attention for its low-cost yet powerful AI models. The company’s flagship model, DeepSeek-V2, launched in May 2024, demonstrated capabilities comparable to ChatGPT, despite U.S. export restrictions limiting access to Nvidia chips.
DeepSeek’s chatbot app saw an unprecedented surge in popularity, surpassing ChatGPT in downloads and shaking up the U.S. tech market. This sudden rise had noticeable effects on AI-related stocks, with several major tech firms seeing declines in share value.
Who is Luo Fuli?
Luo Fuli’s journey exemplifies DeepSeek’s ethos of nurturing young talent. Born in Sichuan, China, she initially struggled in computer science at Beijing Normal University before excelling and earning a place at Peking University’s Institute of Computational Linguistics. By 2019, she had published eight research papers at the prestigious Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL) conference, earning recognition in the AI research community.
After completing her master’s degree, Luo joined Alibaba’s DAMO Academy, where she:
- Led the development of VECO, a multilingual pre-training model
- Contributed to AliceMind, an open-source AI project
In 2022, she moved to DeepSeek, playing a pivotal role in the development of DeepSeek-V2, which rivaled ChatGPT in efficiency and performance.
DeepSeek’s unique hiring philosophy
DeepSeek has drawn attention for its unconventional hiring strategy, prioritizing early-career professionals over industry veterans. The company avoids hiring individuals with more than eight years of experience, believing that younger talents demonstrate greater agility and innovation.
Luo Fuli’s move to Xiaomi
Luo’s expertise attracted the attention of Xiaomi’s leadership, leading to her recruitment in late 2024. She has now joined Xiaomi’s AI division, further solidifying her status as one of China’s most sought-after AI researchers.
Despite her rising fame, Luo has expressed discomfort with the "AI Prodigy" label, instead emphasizing the team effort behind DeepSeek’s success.
DeepSeek’s competitive edge
DeepSeek has positioned itself as a formidable competitor to leading AI firms, with its R1 model outperforming several existing industry benchmarks. Its LLMs rival top models such as Llama 3.1, Qwen 2.5, GPT-4o, and Claude 3.5 Sonnet, showcasing the company’s technical capabilities.
With its rapid growth and innovative approach, DeepSeek has firmly established itself as a global AI powerhouse, signaling a major shift in the artificial intelligence landscape.